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The Mars Face at Cydonia and the Tower of Babel
by John G. Cunningham
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The Final Frontier issue of May/June 1993 had an article, "Is Mars Alive?" by Barry E. DiGregorio that dealt with the issue of life on Mars. Dr. Gilbert Levin, who was involved in studying the results of the 1976 Viking landings on Mars, was interviewed in this article. He believes that the results of the mission prove that Mars does contain life. The Enterprise Mission web page also has articles about how NASA apparently found life on Mars in 1976 but subsequently turned their backs on the data.
There is a new book out on the subject. Barry DiGregorio, Mars: The Living Planet. Frog, North Atlantic Books, 1997. The book has a chapter by Gilbert Levin.
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The Cydonia region of Mars
Much has already been written about the connection between the face on Mars and the pyramids of Egypt -- particularly the Great Pyramid at Gisa near Cairo. The name "Cairo" means "Mars." The Gisa area has the sphinx as well as the Great Pyramid and some smaller pyramids. The area of the Cydonia region on Mars has a face and a five-sided pyramid as well as some regular appearing structures that many people call a "city." However, there is another possibility of a connection between Cydonia and a region on Earth that has received little if any attention.
In order for there to be any possibility of a connection between Cydonia and Earth, there had to have been a space program long before the present one. The first program would have had to have far surpassed ours -- so much so that ours would appear to be feeble by comparison.
If you are interested enough in the subject to have turned to this page, you have likely read or heard of various speculations about who or what might have built the face on Mars. The standard view is that the objects are natural occurrences that have no connection with anything artificial. I do not completely discount this view. After all, as with anything else, moderation is in order.
However, there are mathematical relationships between the structures that make it hard for one to believe that these relationships are mere coincidence. The possibility should be discounted that the structures might be artificial. After all, none of us can claim we have enough knowledge on the subject to close the issue. So why would anyone be so dogmatic as to claim that his ideas are the only ones that can possibly be correct?
One reason is that most of us are hopelessly devoted to our world view. The standard world view of the ivory tower in our time is the evolutionary world view. According to this idea, the face on Mars cannot have an Earth connection because of two reasons: Earth and Mars. Really, this reason boils down to one in that evolution calls for progress with time and for mankind to have been more advanced at any time in the past than he is now goes against that world view. As for Mars, while the red planet probably once had a much different climate than it now has and probably once had liquid water, it did not hold on to these conditions for the millions of years that evolution says is needed for advanced life to form.
For the Creationists, all these problems go away. Millions of years are not needed and neither is an idea of progress. In fact, most Creationists' theories state that man did not rise -- he fell. Hence, it should not surprise most Creationists that there might be evidence of past human achievements that go beyond anything we now have.
Books have been written about these possible achievements. However, in most -- if not all -- of them, there is one incident that could clear up the whole picture; yet it receives very little attention. That incident is recorded in a well-known story in the Bible. A connection between this story and the face on Mars is seldom made.
Please turn to Genesis 11 (KJV):
1. And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.2. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
If we believe this account, we find the human race engaged in an attempt to reach Heaven. Does that sound like a space program? How seriously can we take this story? So much so that the Creator -- no less an Authority than He -- said the project would have succeeded. He had no doubt about it; He did not say "possibly" or "maybe." He said the people in the land of Shinar would be able to do what they had set their minds to do.
Now wait! A tower to reach to Heaven! We with our modern scientific minds know that is impossible. Yes, a tower that would reach even a few miles above the ground is an impossibility according to what we know about science. Then how could God have said they would succeed?
There is a principle of Bible interpretation that says a passage means what it says unless there is a really overpowering reason why it cannot mean what it says. Only then do we search for an alternate meaning. If it is truly impossible to build a tower that would reach all the way to Heaven, what were the builders trying to do?
Suppose a modern airplane manufacturer said, "We will build a plane that will reach across the Atlantic." A hundred years ago, one would picture a structure that had one end of it on one side of the ocean and the other end on the other side. An impossibility? Yes. But with our modern way of thinking, we picture an airplane flying from one side of the Atlantic to the other.
Now let's imagine the builders of Babel building something that -- wait a
minute. The text says the top of the tower would "reach" unto Heaven. What
if the top could detach itself and fly somehow. Would that not constitute
a reasonable definition of
"reach"?
(You may
notice that on the back of the American dollar bill there is a picture of
a pyramid with its top detached -- strongly suggesting the idea is ancient.)
There are many people who would say this definition of the word is just as impossible as the other. Maybe that is true in our way of thinking, but remember that the ancients -- in order for any part of this specualtion to have any validity -- had to have had knowledge about which we are as yet unaware.
We in the modern world think we are the crown of achievement and that we know the answers to scientific questions. However, we find repeatedly in ancient literature references to a "golden age" when mankind lived on a higher cultural level than he does now. The Bible hints at this same thing with its account of a Garden of Eden and a record that mankind once lived much longer than he does now.
Anyway, back to what the builders at Shinar were constructing. They started out making brick. There is a reference to stone in this passage -- a hint that the builders might have learned how to make stone. There has been some speculation that some of the stones used to build the pyramids in Egypt might have been made from a concrete-type mix. That is why the blocks fit together so tightly. Again, some people would find this idea fantastic.
Next they built a city and a tower -- both from the bricks, stone, and mortar they had learned to put together. However, they also planned to build a name for themselves in case they were scattered over the whole earth. At least, that is what the text appears to be saying at first glance.
We need to look at the Hebrew word to begin to comprehend what they might really have been building. The Hebrew word translated "name" is shem. What is a shem?
First of all, this is the same word that is used for one of the sons of Noah. Shem, though probably not the oldest of Noah's sons, appears to have been the favorite; for his name always appears first when listed in the Flood story. Furthermore, it was from him that the nation of Israel came. What then is the meaning of the word?
There is a chance that the word is similar to the Semitic word shamash which describes an inscribed monument. Mostly, it means such a monument pointing skyward. The Washington Monument would have been described as a shamash by the ancients.
The word shem might then have something to do with Heaven or space. If it were a flying object, it might explain why it was built in connection with the scattering abroad of the people. Either they were afraid of being scattered abroad, or they were hoping to scatter abroad; and the shem was the means by which they would do so.
If the tower were not a device by which to travel, maybe it was a means to communicate. Even today, towers are used as antennas to transmit or receive radio waves. If our ancient ancestors knew about radio communication, we can understand why they would want to build a tower because, if they were scattered all over the earth, they would be able to keep in touch with each other.
Now why would the builders have started to build a tower or shem? It might be they were building something they knew had existed before the Flood. After all, Shem was born 98 years before the Flood; and he might have been born about the time these devices were invented or at least were coming into widespread use. Ancient man named his children after things or events that were important at the time of birth the child. Sometimes a name stuck to a person because of an important event that happened during the lifetime of an individual.
When I first began my research on the topic of a possible relationship between Mars and the tower of Babel, I was unaware of an association that gives a stronger hint than I realized.
Nimrod. At first the name would not seem to be connected with Mars. I did not see the connection either.
However when we remember how the ancients wrote, the connection becomes more apparent. Often they wrote names with only consonnants. Therefore thay would write a Nimrod's name with the letters NMRD.
The "N" in the above name would be a prefix. The base word is MRD. The base word for Mars would be MR. Very similar to MRD is it not?
The MRD above means rebellion. Add the prefiz "N" and you get "one who rebels". Add the suffix "K" after MRD and you get MRDK, or "one who is rebelled against". We recognise MRDK as Marduk, the chief Babylonian diety.
Marduk was thus also connected with Mars. Both Marduk and Nimrod, who might have been the same person, were thus associated both with rebellion and with Mars.
There is another hint of interest in the heavens in names of the characters of the pre-Flood world. The name Jared means "came down." According to the ancients, it was during his lifetime that the sons of God (the Hebrew bene ha Elohim ranslated "sons of God" cannot have any other meaning other than angels from Heaven -- created by God but no longer having their Father's character) came down to Earth to cohabit with the daughters of men (the Hebrew "men" here means Adam or the entire human race). The offspring of these unions became very evil and led to God sending the Flood.
Keep in mind too that before the Flood lifespans were longer than they are today. With better bodies, probably better minds, and with fallen angels to teach them, we cannot imagine what ancient man might have learned.
Then came the Flood. How much of all this knowledge did the survivors pass on to their descendants? Probably the basic concepts but not enough detail for them and their children to reconstruct what they knew had existed before the Flood.
Yet, once they had multiplied, they could begin to think about reconstructing the pre-Flood devices. That is likely what they were doing in the case of the tower of Babel. They knew in general what they planned to do, but they did not yet know enough to make the idea work. If given enough time, they would have figured out the many steps and succeeded.
As a modern analogy, let us think about our rockets. The basic principle is so simple. Send hot gases one way and the rocket goes the other. Even a child can understand that. Yet to build one that can go into space requires tens of thousands of processes and tens of thousands of employees. No one person can understand enough of the processes to make one work. Perhaps it was the same with our ancient ancestors.
Now what does this have to do witb the face on Mars? It might be that the D & M pyramid near the face is a shem. If so, the Flood could not only have been worldwide but universewide. Life on Mars, which could have existed when (not if) Mars had an atmosphere that was capable of sustaining liquid water, would have been destroyed in the catastrophe.
Anyone who has studied photographs of Mars and, for that matter, of the entire solar system can see evidence of disaster. Mars is pockmarked by craters, indicating it was impacted by huge meteorites. They apparently hit Mars so hard that most of the atmosphere was knocked away as well as a lot of water. We are now finding rocks on Earth that appear to have come from Mars -- sent here by tremendous impacts of meteors hitting Mars and the resulting explosions.
As a Creationist, I believe the planets were not made the way we see them now. They were much more perfect and possibly were capable of supporting life. Even Venus, which today is the hottest body in the solar system, is suspected by some scientists of having once had liquid water. Who knows? Maybe it once was habitable.
I will not spend a lot of time speculating how the ancients might have used shems to travel. Maybe something in the pyramid shape bends gravity and focuses it in a way we do not understand but in a manner that would cause the top of such a tower to lift itself off. A lot might have depended on the alignment of the planets as well as on where the tower was located on a planet. Or the towers could bend electromagnetic waves or cosmic waves such as to enable a vessel to leave one planet and go to another. Or there might be other dimensions involved. The pyramid might have been hyperdimensiuonal. We might someday know.
Bibliography
Charroux, Robert. One Hundred Thousand Years of Man's Unknown History. (1963)
DiGregorio, Barry E. "Is Mars Alive?" Final Frontier May/June, 1993.
Hoagland, Richard C. The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever.
Kang, H. and Nelson, Ethel R. The Discovery of Genesis.
Thomas, Andrew. We Are Not the First. (1971)
Tompkins, Peter. Secrets of the Great Pyramid.
See also the 1962 (or close to that date) Encyclopedia Britainica entries for "Templars" and "Roger Bacon".
Your Comments
Send me mail at America Online.
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© 1998, John G. Cunningham / Shekinah House Publishers